By Scott Gilfoid: Deontay Wilder (40-0, 39 KOs) is predicting huge PPV numbers for his Showtime fight against former unified heavyweight champion Tyson Fury (27-0, 19 KOs) on December 1 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.
Wilder is predicting the fight will bring in 2.5 million pay-per-view buys on Showtime. That figure is far and above the predictions that many boxing fans have for the fight. A lot of them see the bout doing from 300,000 to 400,000 buys.
In terms of the UK buy rate predictions, fans see Wilder-Fury doing less than 100,000 buys. However, if Wilder’s prediction of 2.5 million buys in the U.S are true, it’ll put him in position to ask for a 50-50 purse split for a fight against Anthony Joshua on April 13.
With the potential of Wilder-Fury bringing in 2.5 million+ buys, it’s easy to see why Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn is insisting that Wilder cut a deal for the AJ fight on April 13 BEFORE he fights Fury. If Hearn can get Wilder to sign a deal before he faces Fury, he can get him at a much lower rate than if he waits until after the Wilder-Fury fight pulls in 2.5 million+ buys. Wilder will be able to negotiate from a position of parity instead of weakness, which is where he would be right now if he attempted to negotiate a deal for a fight with Joshua.
“I’m going for 2.5 million. I’m going big,” Wilder said in predicting huge buys for his fight against Fury. “They know our personalities. This fight ain’t hard to sell. You have the personality of me and Fury. It’s going to be crazy. This is the biggest fight in the world right now. If anybody isn’t interested in this fight, they’re crazy. They’re not boxing fans at all,” Wilder said.
What potentially hurts the chances of Wilder-Fury fight failing to bring in 2.5 million buys is Fury’s low visibility in the U.S. Fury, 30, has never fought in the United States before, and he was out of boxing for three years from 2015 to 2018 after beating Wladimir Klitschko. Wilder has a long of the weight on his shoulders in the negotiations. Fury will need to do a lot of interviews, and be incredibly over the top for the fight to do 2.5 million buys in the United States. Fury doesn’t have a large built in fan base in the U.S like some fighters do. That hurts him. The guys that have turned into PPV stars in the U.S that have come from other countries needed to fight in the States for many years before they became big PPV draws.
Wilder says he’s not going to fall into the same trap that Wladimir Klitschko did when he fought Fury by not throwing punches, and fighting like he was afraid of Fury. Wilder says he’s not going to be mentally defeated before he throws his first punch.
“We already called them out for playing mind games, so you lost,” Fury said about about Fury’s mind games that he’s trying to play on him “He thinks I’m Klitschko. This ain’t no Klitschko. My mind is too strong.”
There have been fights in Wilder’s career where he looked gun-shy early on, but he was always able to come on to either knockout his opponents or get a decision. Wilder looked uncomfortable early in his fights against Gerald Washington, Bermane Stiverne [first fight], Artur Szpilka, Luis Ortiz and Eric Molina. But once Wilder let his hands go, he knocked most of those guys out. The only one he didn’t KO was Stiverne in their first fight in 2015, and that was because he broke his right hand early in the fight and was forced to fight injured.When Wilder lets his hands go, he knocks his opponents out. That’s bad news for Fury as well as Anthony Joshua, because neither of those guys have shown to be super human when it comes to taking a hard shot. Wilder has arguably faced guys with better punch resistance than Joshua and Fury in his fights against Johann Duhauapas and Stiverne. Those two guys ate huge shots from Wilder for many rounds before they were eventually stopped.
“I’m taking this fight very seriously,” Wilder said. “It’s as if he’s the champion and I’m the challenger. It’s as if he’s the best man on the planet. It’s as if he’s the man that has dynamite in his right hand right hand right now. That’s how serious I’m taking this,” Wilder continued.
Wilder has to take this fight with Fury seriously. There’s too much riding on the line for Wilder not to take it seriously. If he fails to win and/or look sensational, Hearn will likely use that to justify not giving him the purse split that he’s asking for. Wilder has said this week that Hearn already stated that if the Wilder-Joshua fight never happens, they’ll be alright. If this is true, then they won’t lose any sleep if the fight fails to take place, because Joshua’s loyal fan base will keep turning out in large numbers to see him fight the likes of Dillian Whyte, Jarrell Miller, Joseph Parker, Adam Kownacki, Oleksandr Usyk, Tyson Fury and Hughie Fury. The fans won’t care if Joshua doesn’t fight Wilder, and some of them might secretly be happy if he never does because then there’s no chance of him losing. Joshua will obviously lose at some point. He’s too vulnerable not to lose, but by the time he does get beaten, he might be a billion man in the sport. Will boxing fans say Joshua did it on smoke and mirror? Yeah, but that won’t change the fact that he could walk away a billionaire if he keeps winning, thanks to Hearn’s careful match-making.
“Most definitely I said I was going to smoke him out before. Now it has begun,” Wilder said about Joshua.
Wilder might be able to smoke Joshua out, but I’m not so sure. Unless Wilder is willing to accept percentage from Joshua that says, ‘I don’t want to fight you’ written all over it, the match is unlikely to ever happen.
“Fury ain’t finished. I motivated him to come back. ‘Come back, you bum.’ Against Klitschko, he accomplished his big goal. My goal was to unify. His goal was to beat Klitschko, and he did that,” Wilder said.